


Magimorphmogen

by Gryffinclaw142



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryffinclaw142/pseuds/Gryffinclaw142
Summary: What if COVID-19 really was created in a lab as a bio weapon, but by an evil wizard trying to wipe out all the muggles? This story follows one teenage girl's story through this devastating pandemic as she finds out the wizarding world is real and that she may be able to do something to help.





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

On the morning of my first day of high school, I was lying in bed at four-thirty a.m, unable to sleep. I had only managed to get a couple hours of sleep so far. I was only slightly nervous and excited for the day to come, so I didn’t know why I was sleeping so badly. There had been other nights in the past where I had been far more nervous or excited about the next day, yet this was the worst night of sleep I’d had in a long time.  
I kept trying to concentrate on falling asleep, but of course that made it harder. I didn’t want my first day of high school to be ruined by a horrible night of sleep. I finally gave up around five o’clock. My legs were restless and I couldn’t lie in bed any longer.  
I changed into my first-day-of-school outfit, which was casual and simple: jeans and a sweatshirt. I was planning on wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt, but the night before, the stress had taken over and I relapsed into my old cutting habits. I had struggled with depression since seventh grade, when I was constantly being bullied by a girl in some of my classes named Jessica. She moved after that year, but my self-esteem was heavily damaged and my depression stayed with me, dwindling only slightly through the years.  
I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My long, chocolate-brown hair was messy and wavy from lying in bed. There were bags underneath my light brown eyes from lack of sleep. I brushed my hair and teeth, taking my time because there was still more than an hour-and-a-half until the bus would come. When I finished getting ready, I lied down on the couch upstairs until it was time to leave. I thought perhaps I could get a few minutes of sleep there, but sleep never came.  
At six-thirty five I left to go to the bus stop. Michael Sayre, my father, insisted on taking a first day of school picture of me before I left, so I let him take one and then I hurried to the bus stop, where my best friend since second grade, Sarah Wilson, was there waiting for me. She was one of the few friends I actually had. I was introverted and sort of an outsider, so I didn’t have many friends. She was tall and beautiful, with dark brown hair that came to her elbows. She was an amazing friend that got me through everything. She was the only person I ever told about the bullying. I don’t think anyone else ever found out about that or the depression. My parents suspected I was depressed, but thankfully they seemed to think I was just acting like a normal teenager and they never took me to a counselor. The thought of talking to a stranger about all of my personal problems and trying to answer questions I didn’t know how to answer was appalling.  
“Hey Leah,” she said.  
“Hi Sarah,” I said.  
She yawned. “It’s so early.”  
“I know. It’s stupid how the bus comes at six-forty even though school starts at seven-thirty.”  
”Yeah.”  
She scrolled through her phone. She was almost always on her phone, like most teenagers. My mom wouldn’t let me have any social media, so there wasn’t really much for me to do on my phone. I was at her house less than I was at my dad’s house, but somehow she seemed to be the one that made all the rules for me, rarely letting my dad have a say in anything.  
The bus finally came and got us to school at around six fifty-five, thirty-five minutes before school started. The name of our school was Hollander High School. It was an old, well-known school in Salt Lake City, Utah, known mostly for its sports instead of academics. When we got there, Sarah and I went to the cafeteria and sat down at a table with some of our other friends.  
“Guys, Miss Smith is back!” our friend Brandon said when he joined us at the table.  
“Wait, really?” Sarah asked, surprised.  
“Yeah, except now her name is Mrs. White. Do you want me to show you where her classroom is?”  
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said.  
We followed him to Shelly White’s classroom. I was actually really excited to see her. She was a popular math teacher at the middle school I went to and she was my math teacher in seventh grade. She also taught Sarah, Brandon, and some of my other friends. I was one of her favorite students, so she talked to me occasionally and she was really nice to me. I don’t think she ever found out about the bullying, but she must have just seen me as someone who was shy and lonely that needed a friend. She helped me a lot through my most depressed time because she paid attention to me when most people ignored me. She said bye to me and no one else most days after class and she started random conversations with me some days. We continued to talk to each other in eighth grade, even though she wasn’t my teacher anymore. Every time she saw me she said hi to me or started a conversation with me. But one day, I heard from someone that she was moving. I asked her if it was true, and to my great disappointment, she said yes. I had a month left to talk to her, and then the school year ended and she moved. I hadn’t seen her since then.  
We reached her classroom, which was in a hallway that some people called “The Secret Hall,” but it wasn’t actually that secret. I noticed that the classroom I’d have Math in was right next to her classroom.  
“Hi guys!” she said when we came in.  
“You came back,” Brandon said.  
“I know,” she said. “I decided I missed you guys too much, but there were no positions left at the middle school so I applied here and got a job as the AP Calculus teacher.”  
“That sounds like fun,” my friend Elizabeth said sarcastically.  
Mrs. White laughed. “Actually, it’s a very interesting subject. You should take it someday.”  
“Nope, I think I’m good,” Elizabeth said.  
“I’ll be taking it next year,” Brandon assured her.  
“Good,” Mrs. White said. “I look forward to having you as my student again.”  
We talked to her for a bit longer until she said she had some work to do before her first class. We hung out in the cafeteria until the bell rang.  
The rest of the day was monotonous and pointless. Each class was filled with teachers handing out disclosures and explaining rules. I didn’t even bother paying attention. Along with depression, I also had ADD and a little-known disorder called Maladaptive Daydreaming, both of which made it almost impossible to pay attention during a boring lecture. My maladaptive daydreaming made it so that I spent hours each day daydreaming, coming up with amazing stories and alternate universes that were so much more interesting than real life. I didn’t like to consider maladaptive daydreaming a disorder, because for me it was a good thing that made life so much more interesting. It was an easy escape from reality that I always had with me, and that no one could possibly take away from me. I rarely ever got bored because I almost always had a story in my head to return to, like a movie that I could just press play on.  
None of my friends were in any of my classes, which wasn’t surprising as I only had about three friends and I was in a school of over twenty-five hundred students. I still had the next day, which was B-day, to find out if any of my friends were in my B-day classes, but the odds weren’t in my favor. Not having friends in my classes gave me more time to daydream, but at the same time, it was nice to have a friend in a class so that they could help me focus on my work. It took me forever to get my assignments done because I couldn’t focus and I never had any motivation whatsoever. 

Thankfully, I was able to sleep better the next night. I dragged myself out of bed at 5:45 a.m. It was always extremely hard for me to get out of bed before 10:00 a.m. I had to fight with myself, trying to tell myself that school was more important than sleeping in, even though at the moment staying in bed seemed like the most important thing in the world. Once I had completed the near-impossible feat of getting out of bed, I was left with the inescapable dread of the rest of the day and the dismal, horrible mood early mornings gave me. I dreaded every second of the day, wanting nothing more than to go back to my comfortable bed, where I was safe from homework, socializing, and everything horrible at school. That was how it was every single morning since seventh grade, even on mornings of a day I was looking forward to before. The only mornings that weren’t like that were mornings like the one before, where I had already been awake for awhile, or on mornings I could get out of bed after 10:00.  
“How was your evening?” Sarah asked at the bus stop.  
“Fine, I guess. I just read Harry Potter and signed disclosures and stuff.”  
“Of course.” She laughed. “Which Harry Potter book?”  
“The Sorcerer’s Stone.”  
“What is it...your seventh time reading that book?”  
“No, it’s my sixth time,” I corrected her.  
“Wait, seriously?” she said, surprised. “I was only joking.”  
“Yeah, I’m serious. And I’m planning on reading the entire series forty-two times in total before I die.”  
“Why forty-two?”  
“Because forty-two is the answer to life.”  
“Miss Smith used to tell us that.”  
“I know. It’s from 'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.'”  
“And how do you plan to read the entire Harry Potter series forty-two times throughout your life?”  
I laughed. “It won’t be that hard. Even if I read it once a year, it will only take me thirty-seven more years because I’ve already read it five times. And I plan on living to higher than...fifty-two.”  
“You’re crazy. Don’t you think you’ll get bored of it?”  
“I hope not.”  
Harry Potter had been my strongest obsession ever since third grade when I first read the series. It was one of the other things that had helped me through the past few years. It was my favorite story, far better than any daydream I could come up with. Reading it was another way to escape from reality.  
Just like the day before, my classes were filled with disclosures and long lectures about the school year. The only class I liked was, surprisingly, Gym. I normally loathed Gym class and I was absolutely dreading having to endure another semester of it, but because it was the first day, we just got to do whatever we wanted for most of the class period. My teacher only took about fifteen to twenty minutes explaining rules and for the rest of the time, I just watched Youtube on my phone.  
Right after Gym on the way to Math, I saw Mrs. White.  
“Hi Leah,” she said.  
“Hi Mrs. White,” I said.  
“Do you have Mrs. Peterson for Math?” she asked.  
“Yeah,” I said.  
“Cool. So we’ll still get to see each other.”  
“Yeah.”  
“How do you like your classes so far?” she asked me.  
“They’re okay,” I said.  
Some other girls started talking to Mrs. White so I went inside my math classroom. Mrs. Peterson already gave us homework on the first day of class, which I didn’t think was fair. At least it was only math homework. I didn’t mind math homework as much as other types of homework. Math was one of the few things I was good at and even during the past three years, I had managed to keep my grade at an A in math class. In fact, I sometimes got lower math grades in elementary school than in middle school, which I assumed was because of Mrs. White. Along with being a nice person, she was also an amazing teacher that helped me appreciate math and learn to love it.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

During the next few weeks, I started to hate most of my classes. In the first two weeks, I already got more homework than I would get in about a month in middle school. The amount of homework diminished after the first two weeks, but I still had much more than I did the year before.  
Gym easily became my least favorite class. I despised working out because I could never keep up with the other people so I had to try extra hard. I used to be active in elementary school, but in the last few years, I had become a couch potato and I was extremely out of shape. And the only sport we had played so far was softball, which was a huge waste of time because ninety-nine percent of the time I was just standing in the outfield doing nothing or waiting in line to bat. I tried to daydream during those times, but there were too many distractions and I always had to be on the lookout for softballs flying towards me.  
Mrs. White continued to talk to me whenever she saw me, which was mostly just right before Math. She was yet again becoming one of the popular teachers, which was largely because almost half of the students at Hollander already knew her from middle school.   
One day near the end of September, I was playing softball in Gym. The batter hit the ball and for once, it actually went in my direction. It was flying above my head, so I ran backwards to try to catch it. I tripped and landed hard on the ground, scraping my elbow. I stood up, extremely embarrassed. Lots of people were already staring at me.  
“Are you okay?” someone asked.  
“Yeah,” I said.  
“Are you sure? Your arm is bleeding.”  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, slightly annoyed and wanting to vanish on the spot.  
“You should go tell the teacher,” someone else said.  
“No, its okay⎯”  
“Do you want me to come with you?”  
“No,” I said. “I’ll just go by myself.” My arm was dripping blood, so I thought it might be kind of pointless to refuse to go. I walked up the bleachers to where my teacher was, paying attention to his phone instead of his students.  
“I scraped my elbow,” I told him. “So can I…”  
“Yup,” he grunted.  
I walked back down the bleachers and through the doors to the gym. I tried opening the door to the locker room, but it was locked, so I walked all the way down to the bathroom close to the front of the school. When I walked in, I was surprised to see Sarah in there, washing her hands.  
“Hey,” she said. “Woah, what happened to your elbow?”  
“I scraped it playing softball.”  
“Geez, they need to stop making us play such dangerous sports,” she said sarcastically.  
“I know,” I said, as I turned the sink on and rinsed the blood off.  
“That’s a pretty bad scrape. Does it hurt?”  
“Not that much.”  
I turned the water off and put a paper towel over my elbow to stop the bleeding.  
“Do you have anything going on tonight?” she asked.  
“I don’t think so,” I said.  
“Do you want to come over and we can work on homework and play Minecraft?”  
“Sure,” I said. “Just right after school, or later?”  
“Right after school. You can ride home on my bus. My bus driver won’t⎯”  
“Hey, I can hear you,” someone said. “Get to class.”  
It was Mrs. White. She saw us and walked into the bathroom.  
“Oh, it’s you guys,” she said. “What happened to your elbow, Leah?”  
“I scraped it playing softball in Gym class.”  
“Ouch, are you okay?”  
“Yeah. It’s not that bad.”  
“It looks bad. Here, I’ll take you to my classroom and we can clean it up.”  
“Okay,” I said, glad for the excuse to miss even more of my least favorite class.  
“Sarah, what class do you have right now?” Mrs. White asked.  
“Uh, math,” she said.  
“Oh, then you should probably get back to class. That’s an important class to be in.”  
“Do you think I could come with you guys though?” she asked.  
“Nope, I can’t let you do that. I’m sorry.”  
That was one of the few flaws that Mrs. White had; sometimes she followed the rules too closely. She usually wasn’t willing to bend them, even for special situations.  
“Okay,” Sarah said. “Bye.”  
“Bye,” I said.  
Sarah left and I followed Mrs. White around the corner to her classroom. There was no one in there, so it must have been her prep period.  
“You can sit down,” she told me.  
“Okay.” I sat down in one of the desks as she started looking through her desk.  
“Hang on, I just need to find the Dittany.”  
“What?” I asked, laughing.  
“Oh. Oh yeah, duh. Sorry, I meant the first aid kit.” She laughed and her face seemed to flush red. “Don’t listen to me. I think I’ve been reading too much Harry Potter lately.”  
“You like Harry Potter?”  
“Yeah, I love Harry Potter.”  
“Me too.”  
“Yeah, it seemed like you really liked it in middle school. That’s good that you still like it.” She found the first aid kit and set it on the desk.   
“So besides this, how’s your day been?” she asked.  
“Good,” I said.  
“Do you like Gym class?”  
“No, I hate it with a deep, burning passion,” I said.  
She laughed. “Just because this happened?”  
“No, I’ve always hated it.”  
“How come?”  
“I’m just so out of shape and I can barely do the workouts or the mile run and it seems like no matter how much I work out, I can never get any more in shape.”  
“That’s too bad,” she said as she cleaned my arm. “I hated Gym class when I was in school, too.”  
“Yeah, it sucks.”  
“So what’s your favorite class?”  
“Probably either Math or Choir.”  
She smiled. “I’m glad you like math, because most people hate it.”  
“Yeah.”   
She put a band-aid on my elbow and put the first aid kit away. “I’m assuming you don’t want to go back to class then?”  
“No, not really,” I said.  
“How would you like to stay here for the rest of the class period?”  
“Wait, seriously? You’d let me do that?”  
“Yeah, I mean it’s not like you’d be missing much. Gym is kind of a pointless class, unlike Math. That’s why I made Sarah go back to class.”  
“Well I would love to.”  
“Alright. But I do have some work to do, so there won’t be much for you to do.”  
“That’s fine,” I said.  
I hung out in her classroom for the rest of the class period, talking to her occasionally about Harry Potter and some other things.   
“Alright, I should probably go because I still have to change,” I said, about five minutes before the bell rang.  
“Okay. Hey, just know that you can sluff Gym any time you want to to hang out with me, because I know how much you hate that class. Just don’t tell anyone, because I don’t want other people thinking they can do the same thing.”  
“Wait, really? Couldn’t you get into huge trouble for that?”  
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m not really sure.”  
“But my parents will find out I have a ton of absences…”  
“Not if your gym teacher doesn’t mark you absent.”  
“But how would he not mark me absent?” I asked, confused.  
“I have my ways.” She smiled and winked.  
I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at her, wondering what she meant by that.  
“Bye,” she said before I could say anything.  
“Bye”  
I wasn’t sure what she meant by “I have my ways,” but I hoped it wasn’t something she could get in trouble for. The thought of skipping Gym every day was tempting, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I decided I would have to think about it.  
I walked back to the locker room and started changing, attempting to pretend like I had been in class the whole time.  
“Did you just decide not to come back to class?” the girl next to me asked.  
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Hopefully our teacher didn’t notice.”  
“He doesn’t seem to notice much.”  
“Yeah.” I laughed.  
When I finished changing, I went right back to The Secret Hall for math. Mrs. White was standing by her door, like usual.  
“Long time no see,” she said to me.  
“I know, right?” I said as I walked into my math classroom.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

I went to Sarah’s house right after school and we played Minecraft, procrastinating our homework.   
“So how’s your arm?” she asked.  
“Fine. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”  
“I wish Mrs. White let me come with you, because I didn’t want to go back to Math. My teacher barely even explains stuff. She basically just hands us our homework and tells us to do it.”  
“I know, that’s stupid.”  
I aimlessly walked around my Minecraft house, wondering if I should tell her that Mrs. White let me stay for the rest of the class period. Sarah was my best friend, so I could tell her, right? I eventually decided it was best not to, though. Mrs. White told me to not tell anyone. I wasn’t sure if she meant I couldn’t tell anyone about skipping Gym in the future or if she also meant I couldn’t tell anyone about today, so just to be safe, I didn’t tell Sarah.  
“Yes! I found diamonds!” Sarah said.  
“Nice. How many?”  
“Hang on....Aw, it looks like there’s only three.”  
“Oh. Well that’s better than nothing.”

On Tuesday, which was the next B day, I was constantly debating whether I should skip Gym and hang out with Mrs. White or not. It seemed like too rebellious of a thing to do, and there were too many risks. Someone would surely find out and I’d get in trouble, but not as much trouble as Mrs. White would get in. I eventually chickened out and went to Gym class, where the constant running, push-ups, and standing in the outfield made me question my decision.  
“So you decided you didn’t want to skip Gym today?” Mrs. White asked just before I walked into my math classroom.  
“I just wasn’t sure if I should, because I didn’t want either of us to get in trouble,” I said.  
“We won’t get in trouble. Trust me.”  
“Okay, fine. I’ll come next time.”  
I immediately regretted agreeing to it. Now I had no choice; I would have to take the risk and sluff Gym. But did she even want me to come, or was she just being nice? She had to have wanted me to come, or she probably wouldn’t have brought it up again. But I wondered why she was letting me do this. She always seemed like the type of teacher to follow the rules, so why was she suddenly letting me skip class? The thought crossed my mind that there might be something she wanted to show me, but then why didn’t she just tell me that?

On Thursday right after History, I went straight to Mrs. White’s classroom instead of the locker room. She was sitting at her desk waiting for me.  
“Hi Leah,” she said.  
“Hi,” I said.  
“How’s your week been?”  
“Good.”  
“How’s your elbow?”  
“It’s fine now. It’s mostly healed.”  
“Good.”  
I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do.  
“I have a bunch of tests to grade, so you can just sit down and do homework or play on your phone, or whatever you want to do.”  
“Okay.” I sat down in one of the desks and pulled out my History homework and worked on that for a large part of the class period. When I was done, I grabbed The Hunger Games out of my backpack and started reading it.  
“I’m surprised you’re not reading Harry Potter,” Mrs. White said.  
“Well, I usually don’t read Harry Potter at school, because I’m making a Harry Potter encyclopedia as I read, so I would have to bring my binder and be writing stuff down while I’m reading, which might look a bit weird to other people.”  
“You’re making a Harry Potter encyclopedia?”  
“Yeah, I’m writing down every single character, spell, creature, potion, and some other things.”  
“That’s awesome. You should show it to me sometime.”  
“Okay. I can bring it next time, if I remember.”

On Monday the next week, which was the next B-day, I made sure to put my Harry Potter encyclopedia binder in my backpack. Again, this time I had no choice of going to Gym or Mrs. White’s classroom, because I had told her I would show her my encyclopedia. I was slightly more comfortable with skipping Gym now that I had skipped it once, but it still worried me that one of us would get in trouble.  
“Hey,” she said when I walked into her classroom.  
“Hey,” I said.  
“Did you bring the Harry Potter encyclopedia?”  
“Yeah, let me just get it out.” I pulled it out of my backpack and brought it to her desk.  
“So this is it,” I said. “I’m keeping track of characters, spells, potions, creatures, books, objects, places, plants, costs of items, games, quidditch teams, jobs, and miscellaneous things.”  
“Wow, how long have you been working on this?”  
“I started it near the end of the summer, but back then I was only doing characters. I’ve slowly added more things since then.”  
“Nice. So are you going to keep doing this until you finish the series?”  
“I’ll be done with it as soon as I make it to page seventy the next time I read The Prisoner of Azkaban, which is when I added the last thing, unless I come up with more things to keep track of, then I’ll have to do it for longer to make sure I got everything. But then after that, I’m planning on making a final version where I add more information about the characters and maybe some of the other things.”  
“Wow, so this is probably going to take awhile.”  
“Yeah. It still has a lot of work to be done.”  
“What book are you on right now?”  
“I’m still on The Prisoner of Azkaban, because I just recently added the last thing.”  
“Oh, so you still have to read the entire series to make it back to The Prisoner of Azkaban before it’s finished.”  
“Yeah.”  
“How many times have you read the series?”  
“This is my sixth time.”  
She laughed and said, “That’s a lot. I’ve only read it twice, but my husband is a huge Harry Potter fan, so we’re both reading it together and now I’m on my third time.”  
“Cool. When was the first time you read it?”  
“I read them shortly after the last one came out, when I was about eighteen. When did you first read Harry Potter?”  
“When I was eight.”  
“And have you been a huge fan ever since then?”  
“Sort of. I started to like it more as I got older.”  
“Yeah. Well you’ll have to let me know when you finish the encyclopedia, and then you can show it to me.”  
“Okay.”

I went to her classroom during sixth period every single B-day from then on. Because I had done it a few B-days in a row, I felt pressured to come every time. It was one of those things that I felt obligated to keep doing, just because I had done it a few times, so I had sort of created a trap for myself. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, of course. I was far happier skipping that loathsome hell they called Gym class to read, play on my phone, or catch up on homework, while talking to my favorite teacher and becoming close friends with her, even though she was almost fifteen years older than I was. I just hoped she wasn’t annoyed with me coming every other day. She seemed to enjoy having me there, but perhaps she just was too nice to show that she wasn’t enjoying having me there.  
“So Elizabeth told me that she never sees you go to Gym anymore,” Sarah said to me in the lunch line one day near the end of October.  
I panicked; I wasn’t expecting this. “Uh...I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’ve been in gym class,” I said, knowing it wasn’t convincing enough.   
She smiled and said, “Yeah, right. That sounded like a lie.”  
“No, I’m serious. I’ve been in gym class almost every day.”  
“Then why would she be telling me you’re not going to gym class?”  
“Maybe she just leaves the locker room before I do. She doesn’t even have Gym with me, she has Ballroom during sixth period.”  
“But then why did she see you almost every day at the beginning of the year, but now all of the sudden she’s not seeing you at all before Gym?”  
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”  
“Just stop denying it. I know you’ve been doing something else.”  
I sighed and said, “Fine. I’m not allowed to tell you what I’ve been doing.”  
“Ooh, are you doing something naughty?”  
“No.”  
“Just tell me. I’m your best friend.”  
“I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to tell anyone.”  
She kept trying to get me to tell her, but she eventually gave up. The next day, which was Halloween, I brought it up while I was in Mrs. White’s classroom.  
“So Elizabeth has Ballroom during sixth period, which is right by the gym, and...she told Sarah that she never sees me go to Gym anymore,” I told Mrs. White. “So both Sarah and Elizabeth know that I’m sluffing Gym.”  
“I’m not that surprised,” she said. “I had a feeling some people would notice. Did you tell either of them where you’ve been?”  
“No,” I said.  
“I guess there’s not much of a point in hiding it anymore. You can tell both of them, but make sure to tell them not to tell anyone else.”  
“Okay.”  
So while Sarah and I were standing alone in the lunch line that day, I said, “I was given permission to tell you where I’ve been.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah, but you can’t tell anyone else except Elizabeth, because you and Elizabeth are the only two people I’m allowed to tell.”  
“Okay. So where have you been?”  
“In Mrs. White’s classroom. Since sixth period is her prep period and she knows I hate gym class, she lets me hang out with her every B-day during sixth period.”  
“What?! She wouldn’t even let me skip the last part of sixth period that one day, but she’ll let you skip sixth period every day?”  
“Yeah. She said it’s because you have Math during sixth period and Math is a much more important class than Gym.”  
“So then why won’t she let anyone else skip Gym?”  
“I don’t know. I’ve always been one of her favorite students, and I told her how much I hate Gym, so…”  
“I was one of her favorite students, too.”  
“Yeah, but you have Gym during fifth period, and that’s not her prep period. She has a class to teach during fifth period.”  
She sighed. “I know. But it’s still not fair.”

Sarah and I figured out that the school wifi was barely strong enough for us to play Minecraft together during sixth period. While she should have been paying attention to her math teacher, she was secretly playing Minecraft with me. She said it was fine because she usually didn’t pay attention anyway and she just figured the math out later on her own. She was very intelligent and good at math, so she could just go through school like that, without paying attention very often. I was different. In elementary school I was usually close to the top of my class in reading and math, about where she was, but as I got older I somehow became less intelligent compared to the rest of the people in my grade. During the past three years, I had about a 3.0 grade average, unlike the perfect 4.0 that I almost always had in elementary school.   
“Watcha doing?” Mrs. White asked one of the times I was playing Minecraft with Sarah.  
“Playing Minecraft,” I said innocently.  
“Why is there another character on your screen named Sarah?”  
I smiled and said, “I don’t know. Maybe I just created another character and named her Sarah because I was lonely.”  
“Mhmm…” she said with a knowing grin. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how Minecraft works.”  
I laughed. I wasn’t going to deny it and lie to Mrs. White.   
“Can I see your phone for a second?” she asked me.  
“Why? What are you going to do on it?”  
“You’ll see,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything bad. You can even watch me.”  
“Okay…”  
She grabbed my phone and tapped on the chat button. She typed, “Sarah, this is Mrs. White saying you need to get off your phone and pay attention.”   
She handed me back my phone and we waited to see what Sarah would do. Her character disappeared and at the top it said, “Sarah has left the game.”  
“I’m sorry I ruined your fun,” Mrs. White said. “But I can’t let her be playing Minecraft while her teacher is probably still teaching the lesson.”  
“What about when she’s done teaching the lesson?” I asked.  
“No, she shouldn’t be on her phone during class.”  
“She said her math teacher barely even explains stuff, so she just figures it out later on her own. And you’re letting me be on my phone.”  
“I know, but technically you’re not in class…”  
“Yeah, but I should be. You’re letting me completely skip class, but you won’t let Sarah play Minecraft in class?”  
She sighed. “Well she’s in Math, not Gym class.”  
“I know, but like I just said, she usually figures her homework out on her own.”  
“I’m not going to let her play Minecraft during math class, okay?” she said, somewhat impatiently.  
“Okay, fine.”  
I continued playing Minecraft, but without Sarah. I still didn’t think it was fair that Mrs. White was letting me get away with things she wouldn’t let Sarah do. But I shouldn’t have expected her to let her play Minecraft during math class, because she was a math teacher. Of course she found math much more important than any other class, even if it wasn’t much use to Sarah to pay attention to her teacher.  
“I can’t believe Mrs. White caught us,” Sarah said at lunch one day.  
“I know, I thought we could get away with it.”  
“How did she even find out?”  
“She saw that there was a character on my screen named Sarah, and I told her I just created a character named Sarah because I was lonely. But she was like, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how Minecraft works.’”  
“How would she know how Minecraft works? Does she play Minecraft?”  
I shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”  
“I can’t really imagine her playing Minecraft, but maybe.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Shortly before Thanksgiving Break, Mrs. White and I exchanged numbers so we could keep in touch during the break. We were becoming close enough friends that even though she was a teacher, it wasn’t very weird for us to have each other’s numbers. Some teachers seemed to have a bunch of their old students’ numbers, anyway.   
A few days after we came back from Thanksgiving Break, Sarah and I were sitting in the cafeteria in the morning with our friends, like usual, when I got a text from Mrs. White:

Hey Leah. Come meet me in my classroom when you get to school if you aren’t already at school. Bring Sarah, but no one else. Don’t tell anyone else where you are going.

I must have made a face because Sarah said, “What?”  
“Look at this text I just got, but don’t let anyone see,” I said quietly so no one could hear.  
I handed her my phone and as she read it, her eyes widened. “Do you think something happened?” she asked.  
“I have no idea, but we should probably go.”  
“Okay.”  
We stood up from the table and Brandon said, “Where are you guys going?”  
We looked at each other with panicked faces and Sarah said, “Uh...I need to talk to my teacher about something and Leah is coming with me.”  
“Oh, okay,” Brandon said. Thankfully he didn’t ask which teacher.  
We left the cafeteria and walked down the hall to Mrs. White’s classroom without saying much.  
“Hey guys,” she said casually when we walked in. I was relieved to see that she didn’t seem worried or sad, like something had happened.  
“Hey,” both of us said.  
She closed the door behind us and said, “I was wondering if you guys wanted to go out for brunch during sixth period.”  
I stood there in shock, wondering how she was so naive that she thought we could get away with something so ridiculous. What happened to the Mrs. White who always followed the rules?  
“Where?” Sarah asked.  
“Anywhere you guys want.”  
“But you could get into huge trouble for that,” I said.  
“Not if we don’t get caught.”  
“How are we all going to walk out of the school without getting caught?” Sarah asked.  
“We’ll walk out at different times,” Mrs. White said. “And I have a backup plan if we get caught.”  
“What’s that?” I asked.  
“That’s something for only me to know,” she said.  
“So you have a backup plan, but you won’t even tell us what it is?” I asked. “How are we going to know what to do if we get caught?”  
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to know about it for it to work. Just trust me.”  
“Mrs. White, you could probably get charged with kidnap if you do this,” I said. “And no backup plan is going to save you from getting arrested.”  
She laughed, like her backup plan was actually good enough that she could avoid being arrested. “Guys, just trust me. We won’t get caught. I am aware that I could get into huge trouble for this, but I know I won’t. If I didn’t think I was safe from getting caught, I wouldn’t be doing this. So will you agree?”  
We all stood there for a moment, and then Sarah said, “I guess so. I mean, it’s risky, but it would be fun.”  
“Leah?” Mrs. White said.  
“I...um….fine, I’ll come.”  
“Okay, great!” Mrs. White said excitedly. “Just meet me in my classroom right before sixth period and we’ll leave shortly after.”  
“Okay,” Sarah and I both said.  
We left her classroom and started walking back to the cafeteria.  
“I’m not sure if we should have agreed to that,” I said. “I can’t believe she’s actually risking so much just to take us out to brunch.”  
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun,” Sarah said. “She’s not stupid. If she doesn’t think we’ll be caught, we’ll most likely be fine.”  
“I just don’t see how any backup plan could keep her out of trouble with the law.”  
“I don’t either, but she must have something good planned. As long as we’re careful, I don’t think we’ll get caught.”  
“Yeah…”  
“I’m just excited she’s finally letting me skip class. She wasn’t going to let me all year, but now she’s letting me.”  
“Yeah.”  
Right before sixth period, Sarah and I met up in the hallway and went into Mrs. White’s classroom.   
“Hello,” she said as she closed the door behind us again. We should probably wait about five minutes so that most people are out of the hallway and then we can leave.”  
“Which one of us will leave first?” Sarah asked.  
“I’ll leave first and get in my car. Then I’ll call Leah and you guys will go together and I’ll lead you to my car over the phone.  
“What if people see us walking out?” I asked.  
“Well when you guys walk out, just make sure there aren’t any teachers around. If other students see you, that’s fine; they probably won’t think much of it. In my case, I’ll also make sure there aren’t any teachers around, and I’ll try to make sure there aren’t any students around, but if there are--again--they probably won’t think much of it.”  
“Okay,” I said.  
“So have you guys thought about where you want to eat?” Mrs. White asked.  
“Not really,” I said.  
“Does it have to be a place that has breakfast foods?” Sarah asked.  
“No, of course not,” Mrs. White said. “We can go anywhere, and it doesn’t have to be cheap either. Just make sure it’s not super far away, because we have to have time to eat and come back before sixth period is over.”  
“I’m fine with anywhere,” Sarah said.  
“Me too,” I said.  
“Oh my gosh, should I just choose?” Mrs. White said.  
“Sure,” I said.  
“Okay, there’s three options: Chick Fil-a, Cafe Rio, or Zupas. Which one do you like best out of the three?”  
“Either Chick Fil-a or Cafe Rio,” I said.  
“Same,” Sarah said.  
“Okay, let's just go to Cafe Rio,” Mrs. White said. “It’s usually slightly less crowded.”  
“Okay, sounds good,” Sarah and I said.  
“We should probably wait just a couple more minutes,” Mrs. White said.  
We waited a few more minutes and then Mrs. White left, leaving us alone in her classroom until she called us, which was about two or three minutes later. We went out of the school, making sure no teachers were around. She guided us through the parking lot to her car and we hopped in, making sure no one was watching.  
“Nice, it looks like we made it out of the school without anyone watching,” Mrs. White said. “Now the only thing we have to worry about is getting back in without being seen.”  
“What if someone we know sees us at Cafe Rio?” I asked.  
“The chances of that are low, since we’re going during work and school hours and it’s not lunchtime yet,” she said.  
“But what if someone does see us?” Sarah asked.  
“Then I still have my backup plan,” Mrs. White said.  
“Oh, right,” Sarah said. “The one that you won’t even tell us about.”  
“Just stop worrying about it, we’ll be fine,” Mrs. White said.  
When we got to Cafe Rio, I looked around to make sure there was no one I knew. I didn’t see anyone, and it didn’t seem like Sarah or Mrs. White saw anyone they knew, either. As we were standing in line, I kept glancing at the door to make sure there weren’t any people I knew coming in.  
“So Sarah, do you like Harry Potter?” Mrs. White asked.  
“Yeah,” she said. “Not as much as Leah, but I really like it.”  
“How many times have you read the series?”  
“Twice,” she said.  
“Any plans of reading it again?”  
“Not really, but maybe someday.”  
“You should.”  
“I’ll think about it.”  
We got our food and sat down at a table in the middle, away from any windows so no one we knew that was outside would see us.  
“Hey, I have an idea for a game we can play,” Mrs. White said while we were eating. “I’ll ask you guys a Harry Potter trivia question and whoever gets it right gets a point. Then Leah will ask me and Sarah a question, and then Sarah will ask me and Leah a question, and we’ll keep going in a circle. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.”  
“Okay, that sounds fun,” I said.  
“Yeah,” Sarah said.  
“Okay, I’ll start off easy. What is Harry’s middle name?”  
“James,” Sarah and I both said at the same time.  
“I think that one was a tie, so you each get half a point,” Mrs. White said. “Leah, it’s your turn.”  
“Um...How many Weasleys are there?” I asked  
“Nine,” Mrs. White said.  
“Seven,” Sarah said.  
“Mrs. White got it.”  
“Oh, duh. There are nine,” Sarah said. “I always think there’s seven for some reason.”  
“Nope, there’s nine,” Mrs. White said. “It’s your turn.”  
“Okay. How many players are on a quidditch team?”  
“Seven,” Mrs. White and I both said at the same time.”  
“Yep, so you each get half a point,” Sarah said.  
“Okay, my turn,” Mrs. White said. “What spell did Harry use to defeat Voldemort?”  
“Expelliarmus,” I said before Sarah said anything.  
“Yep, your turn.”  
“What is the last word of the Deathly Hallows?”  
They both sat there, clearly stumped.  
“How are we supposed to know that?” Mrs. White asked.  
“Yeah, do you even know what it is?” Sarah asked me.  
“It’s ‘well,’” I said.  
“How did you remember that?” she asked.  
“I don’t know, I just pay attention to small things like that.”  
“Okay, so I guess neither of us get the point,” Mrs. White said.  
We played for a bit longer and I ended up winning with thirteen points. Mrs. White came in second with ten points, and Sarah came in last with eight and a half points.   
“Thanks for taking us out to eat,” I told Mrs. White.  
“Yeah, thank you,” Sarah said.  
“You’re welcome,” she said.  
We cleaned up our table and walked outside, where two men were walking into the building.  
“Hey! It’s her!” one of them yelled to the other, pointing to Mrs. White.  
Mrs. White reached into her purse to grab something, but the other man snatched her purse up over her head and threw it to the ground. He pushed her against the wall and punched her in the face. My heart was pounding in my throat as I stood there in horror, frantically thinking of what to do.  
“Hey!” I yelled, and I started towards him, but the other man pushed me to the ground and held my hands at my sides. He started punching and kicking me and I tried to fight back, but he was much stronger than I was. I eventually managed to stand up, so I could more easily punch and kick him, but before I could do much, he punched me in the face with force that knocked me back to the ground and brought blackness to the corners of my eyes. He kept beating me up, as I was lying helpless on the ground, too weak to stop him. Next to me, Sarah and Mrs. White were attempting to fight off the first man. With the two of them, they succeeded in pinning him to the ground.  
Just then, the man that was beating me up fell to the ground. Ahead of me I saw a police officer holding a taser gun and relief washed over me. We were saved. He tased the other man before he could stand up, and he called for backup on his walkie-talkie. Sarah and Mrs. White pulled me out of the way of the two men to the wall, where we sat down. The officer put the second man into handcuffs and pointed a gun at the other man.  
“Do you know these men?” he asked us.  
“No,” all three of us said.  
“Did any of you do anything to them?”  
“No, we didn’t,” Mrs. White said. “We were just walking out, and when they saw us they started attacking us.”  
“Okay, we’ll have some ambulances here in a minute.”  
I sat against the wall, bleeding and bruised, but the pain was dulled from the adrenaline that was still coursing through my veins. I didn’t seem to be too badly hurt; it looked like my two worst injuries were a deep cut on my arm and a slightly more shallow cut on my knee. My entire body ached, but nothing felt broken or sprained. Thankfully, Sarah and Mrs. White seemed even less injured than I was.  
A crowd of people was starting to gather around and they kept asking things like, “Are you guys okay? What happened?” It was overwhelming and I wished they would go away.  
Finally, I heard sirens and saw three ambulances, a fire truck, and more police cars. They pulled into the parking lot and came to help. The paramedics told people to get out of the way so they could get to us.  
“Can you tell me where it hurts?” one of them asked me.  
“I don’t know, just everywhere,” I replied.  
“Anywhere in particular that hurts the worst?”  
“Not really. I mean, the cut on my knee and arm hurt.”  
“So you don’t feel like any bones are broken, or anything like that?”  
“No.”  
“Okay. We’ll get you to the hospital as soon as possible.”  
“Okay.”  
In the distance, I saw the police officers putting the two men into police cars.  
“You’ll never get away with this, Shelly!” the man who beat me up yelled. “You know that what you’re doing is wrong!”  
“Do you know what he’s talking about?” one of the officers asked her.  
“No, I have no clue,” she responded innocently. I wondered if she might be lying.  
“Are you sure?” he asked skeptically.  
“Yeah, I’m sure.”  
“Okay, because you need to tell us if there’s a reason they beat you up.”  
“I promise, I have no idea what he meant or why he beat us up,” she said convincingly. “He could just be high or drunk.”  
“Alright, let’s hope so, because if you’re doing anything illegal...”  
“I promise, I’m not.”  
The paramedics put us into three separate ambulances and took us to the hospital. At the hospital, they put all three of us into a shared room, which I was glad about because I didn’t want to be separated from Sarah or Mrs. White.  
I knew we were completely screwed. No backup plan of Mrs. White’s could keep us out of trouble now that that whole thing had happened. They would surely call Sarah and I’s parents and tell them what happened, and possibly the principal of Bingham High School. And all of our friends would find out what happened, and by the beginning of next week, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole school knew about it. Mrs. White was no doubt going to be fired, and most likely arrested. I didn’t want her to go to jail for something as small as taking us out for brunch, and the prospect of the rest of the school year and the rest of high school without her was devastating. My days hanging out in her classroom were over and I’d have to endure the last few weeks of gym class, but worst of all, with her not being at Hollander anymore and possibly going to jail, I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever get to see her again. I had her number, but that was useless if she was in jail, and just because I had her number that didn’t guarantee that I’d get to see her again.   
The nurses drew the curtains so I couldn’t see Sarah or Mrs. White anymore and they got me changed into a hospital gown and they checked my vitals. They said the doctor would be in soon to stitch up my arm and knee. Before they left, they drew back the curtains so I could still talk to Sarah and Mrs. White.   
“How are you guys doing?” Mrs. White asked after they left.  
“Fine,” I said.  
“Good,” Sarah said.  
“I’m so sorry I took you guys out to eat. I feel so bad,” Mrs. White said apologetically.  
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You didn’t know what would happen, and we’re all fine. None of us have serious injuries.”  
“I know, but I still feel bad.”  
“What you need to worry about is yourself,” I said. “Because there’s no way you can get out of getting in trouble now.”  
“Oh, shoot, I didn’t realize,” Sarah said. “What if they arrest you for kidnapping us or something?”  
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I have everything under control.”  
“What do you mean?” I asked incredulously. “They’re going to find out you’re a teacher and they’ll call our parents and probably the principal and you’ll get into huge trouble. There’s no way you can stop people from finding out now.”  
“Guys, stop worrying about me. Everything will be fine.”  
“But you’ll be fired and probably arrested and we might never see you again,” I told her.  
“You’ll see me again, don’t worry.”  
“In about five years when you’re out of prison?” Sarah said.  
“I won’t be going to prison for five years. I told you, I have everything under control. I just need you guys to do one thing: Don’t bring it up to anyone and if someone asks you about it, act like there’s nothing wrong with what I did. Just act like you didn’t know it was against the rules, and we should be fine.”  
“And how is that supposed to work?” I asked.  
“Just trust me and do what I say.”  
“That’s not going to⎯” I broke off just as the doctor came in.  
“Hey,” she said. “Which one of you is Leah Sayre?”  
“I am,” I said.  
While she was stitching up the lacerations on my knee and arm, two other doctors came in to check on Sarah and Mrs. White. Neither of them needed stitches or had any broken bones; they were just covered in bruises and abrasions.  
I had some suspicions that there were things I didn’t know about Mrs. White. She seemed much too reluctant to tell us about her backup plan and she didn’t seem worried that she could be fired and arrested. I wasn’t sure how any backup plan could actually work, but she seemed to know something we didn’t. And when the man who beat me up said, “You’ll never get away with this, Shelly! What you’re doing is wrong!” I wondered if there was something else she was trying to do that she wouldn’t tell us about. Why would those men beat her up if she was just a random woman on the street they had never seen before? I sincerely hoped it wasn’t anything illegal, but at this point, who knew with Mrs. White? In the past couple months, she was surprising me with things I had never expected of her.  
An attractive middle-aged man I didn’t recognize walked in while I was still getting stitches. He hurried over to Mrs. White’s bed.  
“Shelly, I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said as he grabbed her hand. “How do you think⎯”  
“Chris, later…” she half-whispered as she subtly jerked her head towards the doctor, Sarah, and I.   
“Oh, right,” he said as he looked over and noticed us for the first time.  
The doctor paused and looked at them suspiciously, but she seemed to decide that whatever it was they were talking about was none of her business and she resumed putting stitches into my knee.  
“Chris, this is Leah and Sarah, two of my favorite students,” Mrs. White said, changing the subject. Thankfully the doctor didn’t seem to think it was unusual that a teacher was in the hospital with two of her students.  
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard about Leah, but you haven’t told me about Sarah.”  
“She’s Leah’s best friend, and I taught her when she was in seventh grade.”  
“Nice. Well I’m Christopher White, Mrs. White’s husband,” he told us. “You can call me Chris.”  
“Hi,” I said.  
“Hey,” Sarah said.  
“You guys alright after the incident?”  
“Yeah,” we both said.  
“Not a good day for your teacher to take you out for brunch, I guess...”  
I was astounded at his ignorance. Did he not realize there was a doctor in the room who could go tell the police how Mrs. White had basically just kidnapped two students?   
Surprisingly, the doctor didn’t even look up. She kept stitching up my knee, as though the man behind her hadn’t just admitted to his wife doing something illegal. I wondered if she was keeping quiet now, but later she would go tattle to the police or tell one of her co-workers.   
“So Leah, I’ve heard you really like Harry Potter,” Chris said to me.  
“Yeah, I love Harry Potter,” I said.  
“Awesome. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, too.”  
“Alright, I’m all done,” the doctor said when she finished stitching my knee. “We’ll keep all three of you here for a little longer and then you’ll be free to go.”  
“Okay,” the three of us said.  
About ten minutes after she left, Susan, my mother, and Victoria, Sarah’s mother, came in together.   
“Leah, are you okay?” Mom said worriedly.  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.  
“They said you got beat up. Who beat you up? What did you hurt?”  
“I don’t know who they were. One of them started beating up Mrs. White and the other one started beating me up. Sarah tried to help and they beat her up, too. I’m fine, I just cut my arm and knee and I have a bunch of bruises and scrapes.”  
“Oh, Leah, I’m so sorry that happened. I told your dad. He should be here soon.”  
“What exactly did you tell him?”  
“I told him what the police told me, that you got beat up, but that your injuries are minor.”  
“Hopefully he’s not too worried.”  
“I know. So what were you doing? Why were you at Cafe Rio?”  
“Yeah, Sarah, what were you doing at Cafe Rio?” Victoria asked.  
Both of us hesitated and looked at Mrs. White. She smiled and nodded, which I assumed meant we could tell our moms. I wasn’t sure how we could have lied about it, anyway, because I couldn’t think of many other reasons why the three of us would be at Cafe Rio during school hours.  
“Mrs. White decided to take us there,” I said hesitantly.   
“Oh, that’s nice,” Mom said. “Did you thank her?”  
“Yeah,” I said, confused from her reaction. Why didn’t she think it was unusual that a teacher took us out to eat without parent permission? I expected her to tell Mrs. White off for taking me out of school without her permission, but she acted like nothing was wrong with it.  
“Yeah, that was so nice of her to do that,” Victoria said.  
“I know,” Sarah said, also looking confused.  
Mrs. White kept smiling, as if what she did wasn’t illegal. I was perplexed that neither Mom nor Victoria said something about how it was illegal and that she shouldn’t have taken their daughters outside of school grounds.   
Dad came about twenty minutes later. He fussed over me less than Mom, which I was thankful for because I didn’t like being fussed over. Like Mom and Victoria, he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with a teacher taking us out to eat during school hours. Why was no one saying anything about it? Were people forgiving her just because of what had happened? There was no way she could get away with it just because she got beat up. I thought she would get into even more trouble because we got beat up. I expected Mom to get mad at her because she put us in an unsafe situation so it was her fault or something like that, but she seemed just fine with it.  
The doctors let us all go a couple hours later, around three o’clock in the afternoon. I said goodbye to Sarah, Victoria, Mrs. White, Chris, and Dad, and Mom drove me home. I was worried about Mrs. White. Surely the principal would call her or something and tell her she was fired. Or the police might come to her house and arrest her, but why wouldn’t they have just arrested her at the hospital? Was everyone just going to forget what had happened and not bother her?   
Later that night, I decided I couldn’t stand not knowing. I texted her, saying,

Are you okay? Have you still managed to not get in trouble? Please tell me you haven’t been arrested or fired.

She took a minute to respond, and every second that passed increased my worries that she had been arrested and was in jail. She finally responded, saying,

Don’t worry about me, I haven’t been fired or arrested and I won’t be. If the police were going to arrest me, they would have done it already. Everything will be fine. 

I texted back:

But you could still be fired. The principal will find out if he hasn’t already.

Less than a minute later, she texted:

The principal probably already knows, because I never came back to work. But just like with the police, since he hasn’t fired me yet, he most likely won’t fire me.

I responded with a simple “okay” because I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t believe she was getting away with taking us out of school without permission. Perhaps what she did wasn’t as illegal as I thought it was. But even if it wasn’t illegal, it had to have at least been against school rules, which meant she probably would have received a call from the principal by now. I wondered if he was just leaving her alone today because she got beat up, but later he would fire her.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The rest of the weekend felt long because of the fact that I didn’t know whether Mrs. White would be at school on Monday or not. I just wanted Monday to come, so I could confirm to myself that she hadn’t been fired or arrested. I could have just texted her, but I didn’t want to bother her too much.   
When I walked to the bus stop on Monday morning, Sarah was the only one there. We were usually the first two at the bus stop because there were only two other people that shared our bus stop and they usually came later. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to talk to her in person about what had happened.  
“Do you think Mrs. White has been fired or arrested?” I asked her.  
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Because if she still hadn’t been fired or arrested on Friday when you texted her, she probably won’t be.”  
“I know, I was thinking the same thing, I just don’t see how she could’ve gotten away with it. What if they just waited until Saturday or something?”  
“That wouldn’t make sense, but who knows? I guess we’ll find out at school today.”  
“I’m gonna go to her classroom right when we get to school to see if she’s there. Do you want to come with me?”  
“Sure.”  
The two other people came to the bus stop and the bus came shortly after. When we got off the bus, we went straight to Mrs. White’s classroom. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her in there, sitting at her desk.  
“Hey guys,” she said.  
“Hi,” Sarah said.  
“I see you haven’t been fired or arrested,” I pointed out.  
“I told you I wouldn’t,” she said, smiling.  
“But how?” Sarah asked.  
Mrs. White shrugged. “I’m not sure. I guess I just got lucky.”  
“I think you did something to get away with it,” I said. “You kept telling us you had a backup plan if you got caught, so you must have used that. But what I don’t understand is how you managed to create a backup plan that was so good it kept you from getting in trouble when the police literally saw you with us at Cafe Rio.”  
She smiled mischievously. “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I’m just magic.”  
“So you still won’t tell us what your backup plan was?” Sarah asked.  
“Not today. Maybe someday, though. If I feel like it.”  
“Why not today?” Sarah asked.  
“It’s just not the time.”  
“When will be the time?”  
“I don’t know, maybe never if you keep asking about it.”  
“Okay, sorry.”  
“So how are you guys doing?” Mrs. White asked to change the subject.  
“Good,” we both said.  
“How are you really doing?”  
“I really am fine,” I assured her. “I’m sore, but it’s nothing that Ibuprofen can’t fix.”  
“And Sarah?”  
“I’m fine too. Leah got way more hurt than I got.”  
“Alright. I’m sorry again that I took you two out to eat. Even though I had my backup plan, it was still against the rules and I shouldn’t have done it.  
“Yeah, but it’s not like going to Cafe Rio is dangerous,” I said to her. “We just went on a bad day. There’s no way you could’ve known what would happen.”  
“I know…”  
“Elizabeth just texted us asking us if we’re at school,” Sarah said.  
“Should we go to the cafeteria, then?”  
“Sure, I guess.”  
“Okay, bye guys,” Mrs. White said.  
“Bye,” we both said as we started to walk out of the room.  
“Wait, can you two do one thing for me?” Mrs. White asked.  
“Yeah,” we both said.  
“I don’t want you telling people I had a backup plan that got me out of trouble. You can tell people what happened, but when you’re telling them the story, I still want you to act like it wasn’t against the rules, okay?”  
“Okay,” we both agreed.  
“Okay, bye.”  
We walked to the cafeteria, where Elizabeth and Brandon were sitting at our usual table, along with some other people that sometimes sat with us.  
“Hey, I heard what happened on Friday,” Elizabeth said to us when we reached the table. “Are you guys okay?”  
“Yeah, we’re fine,” I said.  
“So tell me what happened.”  
“Yeah, we want to hear what happened,” Brandon said.  
We recounted the whole story to them and the other people at the table, leaving nothing out except for the fact that a teacher taking students out of school grounds was against the rules.  
“Do you know who the people who beat you up were?” Brandon asked.  
“No, we’ve never seen them before,” I said.  
“Did Mrs. White get in trouble?” Elizabeth asked.  
“No. What would she get in trouble for?” I asked innocently.  
They laughed. “You actually think she wouldn’t get in trouble for taking you to Cafe Rio during school hours?” Brandon asked.  
“I don’t think that’s against the rules,” Sarah said convincingly.  
“How would that not be against the rules?” a girl named Alexis said. “She basically kidnapped you.”  
“I don’t think it’s considered kidnap if she had our permission,” I said.  
“But did she have your parent’s permission?” asked Brandon.  
“No,” Sarah and I said.  
“I’m pretty sure that’s still illegal if she doesn’t have your parent’s permission.”  
“I don’t think so,” Sarah said. “She hasn’t been arrested or even fired, you can go see for yourself.”  
“Whatever,” Brandon said. “I just can’t believe she got away with it.”  
We kept talking about it until the bell rang. No one in my first class mentioned it, but by second period, it seemed as though a large number of people had heard about it. A few people started asking me about it during class, which drew attention and caused more people to ask what had happened, so my teacher ended up making me tell the story to the whole class. By the end of the day, I would have guessed that everyone in the school knew about it.

People continued to talk about it for the rest of the week and even a bit into the next week, which didn’t surprise me because it was probably the most exciting event our school had had throughout the entire year so far. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention; usually I kept quiet and avoided drama, so it was a big change for me to suddenly have people talking to and about me all day. It did get a bit annoying after a while, with people constantly asking me for the whole story. I must have told it about a couple dozen times by the end of the week.  
Mrs. White was still refusing to tell us her backup plan, and she still wouldn’t let Sarah skip sixth period, even though she let her skip it once. She said it was a one time thing and that she shouldn’t expect to be allowed to sluff Math again. However, she decided to let Sarah and I play Minecraft again, but only while Sarah’s teacher wasn’t teaching the lesson and on days they didn’t have a test.  
As the end of first semester drew nearer, I dreaded it more and more. My days in Mrs. White’s classroom were almost over because Gym was only a semester-long class. My new sixth period class would be Computer Programming, and I wasn’t sure if she would let me skip that class. I was worried my friendship with her would fade, because the only time I could think of to talk to her was as I walked into my math classroom each B-day, which would only account to about a minute or less each day. I could visit her before school, but she had never told me specifically that I could hang out in her classroom before school and I didn’t want to bother her. Additionally, I would deeply miss having an extra hour-and-a-half each B-day to do homework, read, or play Minecraft. During the past couple months, my depression had seemed to die down. I was still depressed, but not as much as I was before high school started. I hadn’t self-harmed since the night before school started.   
On the last day before Winter Break, we had two assemblies and a service project. The service project was during sixth period, so Mrs. White, Sarah, and I, along with Brandon and Elizabeth, worked on the service project together. We had to fill bags with food for homeless kids in our school district. For the last part of sixth period, all of us went to Mrs. White’s classroom because apparently on the last day before Winter Break, the teachers didn’t really care whether students were in the right class or not. We mostly talked and ate candy while Mrs. White worked at her desk. She said they were only making seventh period ten minutes long, so she let us go to lunch early so we could get ahead in line for the food trucks that were at our school that day. I said goodbye to Mrs. White because that was probably the last time I would see her until after Winter Break, and then we went to lunch. It was one of the best days of the school year because we didn’t have to do any work besides the service project, which was actually kind of fun because I had friends with me.

Winter Break was uneventful. I hung out with Sarah a couple times and texted Mrs. White occasionally. I also read a lot of Harry Potter and watched some of the movies, while working on my Harry Potter Encyclopedia, which was still nowhere near finished.  
The next B-day after we came back from Winter Break, I was working on homework in Mrs. White’s classroom, when she asked, “What’s your new sixth period class going to be next semester?”  
“Computer Programming,” I said, hoping she might say I could skip it some days.  
“Oh, because I was thinking...if it was an easy class that didn’t have much work, I might let you skip some days. Have you heard anything about that class?”  
“Not really.”  
“Well you’ll have to let me know how it goes. If it’s one of those classes where most of the time you’re just working on work and the teacher isn’t talking, I might let you, but probably not every day.”  
“Okay,” I said excitedly.  
“What will your third period class be? That’s my other prep period.”  
“Engineering.”  
“Okay, same thing with that one. You’ll have to let me know how it goes. And if neither of those classes are classes that would be easy to skip, hopefully we’ll still get to talk to each other.”  
“I know. I mean, I’ll still get to see you when I’m walking to Math, but that’s not very much.”  
“Yeah. But next year, if you take AP Calculus then you’ll get me as a teacher.”  
“I’m planning on it. But that’s about seven months away.”  
“Yeah, and who knows if we’ll even have s--” She paused. “Actually, never mind.”  
“What?” I asked curiously.  
“Nothing.”  
“What were you going to say?”  
“It’s nothing. I’ll be your teacher next year as long as you take AP Calculus, don’t worry.”  
“Okay.”  
The last two weeks of the semester flew by much faster than I wanted them to. Mrs. White seemed slightly more stressed than usual, but she never told me why. Perhaps she just had too many end-of-semester tests and last-minute work to grade.   
I went to her classroom on the last B-day of the semester, desperately hoping it wasn’t my last day in there for the year. How had the last day of the semester already come?  
“Do you know what Sarah’s third period class will be next semester?” she asked me.  
“I think it’s Seminary.”  
“I would let her skip that if she wanted to come to my classroom some days, but not every day.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. Maybe you could just bring her with you any time you come during third period, if you are able to come during third period. Only if she wants to, of course.”  
“Okay, I’ll ask her.”  
“Alright. And tell her to not tell anyone else about it, because again, I don’t want other people thinking they can skip their easy classes and come to my classroom.”   
“Okay.”  
She continued working on her computer for a moment and then she said, “Your birthday is on Tuesday, right?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Okay, I knew that. I just wanted to make sure.”  
“Why? Are you getting me a gift or something?”  
“You’ll see,” she said with a smile.  
“Okay…” I said. “You better not be getting me anything big. I don’t want you spending a lot of money on me.”  
“Don’t worry about that.”  
The bell rang.  
“Is sixth period over already?” she said. “Well, bye.”  
“Bye.”  
I left her classroom for what I sincerely hoped wasn’t the last time of the year and walked into my Math classroom. I would try to make sure it wasn’t the last time, though. Even if my two new classes were hard, maybe I’d still choose at least one or two days to hang out with her.   
As Sarah and I were walking home from the bus stop alone, I said, “So today Mrs. White said you could skip Seminary some days to hang out with her because third period is her other prep period.”  
“Wait, really?”  
“Yeah. But she said she doesn’t want you doing it every day. So maybe just come with me on the days I go during third period.”  
“Why wouldn’t she let me do that before? Seminary has been my third period class all year.”  
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know her other prep period was third period until a couple weeks ago.”  
“Okay. When is the first time you’re going?”  
“I don’t know, I’ll have to see how my Engineering class goes. If it doesn’t require a lot of work, I might go soon.”  
“Okay. Just let me know when you go and I’ll come with you. I could probably skip any day of Seminary.”  
“Okay.”


End file.
